“The case, and… well, my living situation… I feel bad going to your place right now. I should be heading to a hotel. I should be going to a motel, save money while I try to find a place I could live in that isn’t already lived in by a colony of roaches. I’m kind of really stressed, yeah.” I could feel myself working things up in my head, past the point of reasonable return. My palms were getting sweaty, and words were becoming more difficult to piece together into something resembling a coherent sentence.
Fox must have seen it, too. We stopped next to my car, Fox standing in front of me, his gaze pinning me to the ground.
“You’re going to be okay, you hear me, Jonah? You’re not going to any grimy motel, or any hotel for that matter. You’re staying at my place, and that’s the end of that. You aren’t stepping on my toes, and you aren’t a bother. I actually want you there, if I’m going to be honest, which is something you’ve been making me do a lot of recently.”
I looked up into his eyes. His message hit me loud and clear. I was going to be all right, and more so because I had Fox with me. He was on my side, fighting in my corner.
I kissed him. I don’t know what exactly pushed me to do it, but I did. There on the empty side street, his face illuminated by the orange street lights above us, I kissed him. It was short and sweet and powerful.
It confirmed things for me.
It was all going to be okay.
24 Gabriel “Fox” Morrison
Three Weeks Later
Time shot by in a blur. Before I knew it, almost a month had passed since I had met Jonah.
Since my life altered course for the better.
Before him, I was drifting, bobbing up and down in empty open water. The elation of my new job had only lasted a short time before the emptiness from the rest of my life crept in and took over. And I had accepted it. Welcomed it, almost. The emptiness felt like comfort, keeping me safe and secluded and centered. It was almost a military-like instinct, to take hold of that emotion and make it yours, to not let the opposite happen.
So I claimed that emptiness, owned it.
And then Jonah shook my hand and everything changed.
We’d gotten closer and closer ever since. It was a double-edged sword, this relationship we were developing. I was being stupid, I knew that. Jonah was still very much in flux, and what was happening between us only added to his confusion. I got that, and that frustrated me to no end.
I didn’t want there to be confusion. I didn’t want there to be turmoil. I just wanted Jonah, and I wanted the happiness I knew would come by the two of us being together.
Being together. That’s not going to happen.
I had to keep myself in check. I stood in my kitchen, the sunlight breaking through the sheer white curtain that covered the window. The coffee machine sputtered and whirred, spewing coffee into my cracked blue mug.
I had to remind myself that Jonah was here temporarily, and that our friendship was just that: a very strong friendship.
A friendship that had us giving regular blowjobs to each other, showering together, always eating dinners together, sitting and watching TV together for hours on the weekend.
Who the fuck am I kidding. This is as much a friendship as Bert and Ernie had.
And everyone knows they were fucking.
We worked exceptionally well together, too, in a professional setting. We had different strengths and weaknesses that made working together complementary rather than messy. It was specially important since we were working so closely together. All the other detectives at Stonewall already had their own cases and were working pretty independently, but Jonah and I were very much linked. Dragon thankfully hadn’t spread, yet, but it had taken six more lives and caused the DEA to take heavy action against Club Trinity. We had gotten the call last week that the club was shut down indefinitely, news that none of us wanted to hear, but we all knew it was necessary.
This meant Dylan, Pierre, and Lucien had extended their honeymoon trip and had been out of the country since. It was frustrating, seeing as how the evidence we’d uncovered was leading us right back to the club, but we could do nothing about it except wait for them to come back so that we could interview them. Pierre still hadn’t sent over the security camera footage, and that was something else I was highly interested in checking out, although we did talk to the tech company he used and verified that they were in fact real and busy.
In the meantime, Jonah and I worked hard trying to find any other links or clues. We still couldn’t figure out what the signature L.M.F. stood for, nor could we figure out when or where the next drug pickup was going to be, but at least there was something biting on our line.